This invention relates generally to apparatus for optically measuring dimensions with video equipment and, more particularly, to such apparatus as used for automatically and accurately measuring dimensions of small features along two orthogonal axes.
During the manufacture of a printed circuit panel, a large number of through holes or vias is drilled by a multiple spindle drilling machine that is relatively moved from one drilling location to another over the panel. Dimensional accuracy of the hole placement must be assured and the panel must be carefully inspected to ensure that the drilling machine has been accurately positioned. Manual inspection of even a few selected holes makes the cost prohibitive. Accordingly, an automated system of measurement is required.
The automated optical measurement of relatively small dimensions is well-known. Most systems use a moving beam of light that traverses the surface of an object and changes reflectivity as contrasting features are encountered. An example of this method is United Kingdom Patent Specification No. 1,404,311 in which pulses are gated to an accumulator during the time light is reflected from a contrasting feature in the path traced by a small beam. The accumulated pulses become a measure of the feature dimension when the beam velocity is known or when scale marks are sensed during movement. In the case of holes or openings, one solution has been to gate pulses from a fixed frequency oscillator to an integrator or accumulator during the time a relatively moving light beam passes through the opening or impinges on a grid work of opaque lines during the movement. Again, the velocity of the beam is uniform and known to enable conversion to a dimension. Examples of this latter technique are taught in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,447,024 and 3,546,671.
The holes drilled in printed circuit panels are becoming smaller in diameter as drilling capabilities are improved to enable more circuits and their vias to be placed within a unit area. In addition, the panels are being laminated with more layers so that the aspect ratio, length to diameter, of the hole is increasing. These factors make the usual approaches of light transmittance through the hole or direct reflectance for gating a counter unacceptable because the sensors are inaccurate or incapable at the smaller dimensions. A system using a vidicon camera and magnifying lens, such as that described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,551,052, is necessary to scan the drilled opening. This latter reference, however, is inadequate in determining the location of an opening with respect to a reference and cannot provide a dimensional output as a pulse number since it responds with only a single pulse during each traversal of a contrasting area.
In order to obtain accurate measurement of location, several scans are required to assure that irregularities at the edges of the opening are minimized in influence and that measurements can be taken with a high degree of accuracy, such as the distance of a reference to the edge of the opening or the distance across the opening on a particular scan line. The techniques heretofore known have been unable to perform these required measurements, thereby preventing the desired automating of hole inspections.